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The Hays County Criminal Justice Coordinating Commission met Wednesday afternoon to discuss a potential pretrial services department to mitigate objections to a Cite and Divert program running out of the District Attorney’s Office.
District Attorney Wes Mau and Sheriff Gary Cutler announced the Cite and Divert program back in July 2020, which would have given law enforcement officers an additional diversion option when dealing with criminal cases.
Rather than appearing before a magistrate, eligible residents would have an opportunity to meet with a prosecutor from the Hays County Criminal District Attorney’s Office who could determine that a course of diversion is most appropriate. Once the person satisfies the requirements determined by the prosecutor, possibly community service, meeting with a counselor or seeking treatment, the program successfully concludes, and their record remains clear of that offense.
“The benefit of successfully completing the diversion is essentially the case gets dropped without any kind of court paperwork,” Mau said.
The program has not become operational due to COVID-19 restrictions preventing in person probation meetings and classes, and due to objections that a prosecutor may take advantage of the cited individual if they are not provided with counsel outside the DA’s office.
It was suggested that the state-funded probation department might be able to assign officers to supervise and monitor cases, rather than the DA's office to separate that power.
However, the Pretrial Services Committee has already been working on a draft proposal for a pretrial services department that would ideally house the Cite and Divert program and resolve this concern.
“We would be better off if we had a pretrial services department that could handle this outside the Community Supervision and Corrections Department,” Mau said. “I believe defense attorneys could get behind this.”
Mau says ideally the department would be a place where individuals can report with their citations before they begin a Cite and Divert program, but a new department would also require county funding and at least an administrator and a clerical staff person.
Mau spoke of expanding to add mental health providers and other inpatient treatment services to create a future one-stop shop for diversion.
The commission has been meeting with other holistic offices like a Public Defender Office and Neighborhood Defender Services to learn from their policies and practices. An attorney could work hand in hand with a social worker to create an individualized approach addressing external causes for why someone might interact with the criminal legal system, explained University of Texas at Austin’s Criminal Defense Clinic’s Katie Dyer.
“My hope would be eventually that there would be nothing that will be unavailable to an indigent defendant, that a person who hires their own attorney is currently getting,” Mau said. “Pretrial services would fill in that gap.”
He expects those services to speed up resolutions of cases, make them more just and even shorten probation times.
San Marcos Police Chief Stan Standridge asked for more objectivity in the process after Mau explained it would be up to law enforcement to determine whether a case was eligible for cite and release or for diversion.
“I’m concerned that expecting officers to have this notion of what needs to be remarkably objective versus subjective,” Standridge said. “This threshold for deciding enforcement versus diversion, I can imagine that we're going to be picked apart on any of these decisions we make.”
Local criminal justice reform advocates challenged the idea of creating an entirely new department to house holistic services ahead of implementing the Cite and Divert program, and asked for shortterm solutions that might make Cite and Divert available sooner.
“I’m not sure we need a whole department to oversee Cite and Divert,” Dyer said. “There are ways that short of having a whole department that people could report compliance and there are issues, revisit it with a defense attorney present with the DA's office.”
“We do have a countwide department in the criminal justice system with analysts and county attorneys,” added Mano Amiga’s Policy Director Eric Martinez. “We are living in a pandemic and you know these are petty offenses. And so for those who really can divert away from entering into the criminal legal system just has so much benefit in the personal component of these people’s lives. From our perspective, we would like to see something as operational as quickly as possible. And really address all these hurdles that have been the same hurdles for the last (seven) months.
“I know that there are a lot of brilliant minds here and it can be addressed ahead of the need for a whole separate creation of a pretrial services department,” Martinez said.
Bexar County Chief Public Defender Michael Young was invited to the meeting to share their experiences of launching their office. “When we started the counsel at magistration and then the Cite and Release, I can tell you with both of those, they’ve been through 100 iterations after we started,” Young said. “So it's really, just start it, and then you work out the kinks as you go ... until you start you don't really know what the problems are going to be.”
Mau has big hopes for all that a pretrial services department might encompass, and Cite and Divert would be one part of it. Although he still has concerns about how to solve funding and staffing issues, he plans to continue to share a draft proposal for feedback before the next meeting.
sgates
@sanmarcosrecord.com
Twitter: @StephJGates
